A culinary and solidarity tour of northwest Tunisia with Socio Chanty

Tourism without prism: get to know the people, their land and their cuisine!

What’s behind Tunisia’s beautiful landscapes? Its thousand-year-old ruins and captivating medinas hide men and women. You’ll cook their ancestral dishes with them, irrigate their oases with them… From north to south, we offer you 10-day tours to live among us. You’ll never forget that once, for 10 days, you were Tunisian.

Your hosts: Takwa & Haikel, and Noura Nouioui

Haikel and Takwa are a local couple with a young daughter. Takwa is a qualified cook and Haïkel is a master cheesemaker. The chef and master share their small farm in Aïn Drahem with their goats and other animals. The mountainous landscape is captivating and generous. There’s no question of being a salaried employee when you live surrounded by so much wealth and hold such precious knowledge. Haikel and Takwa have turned their farm into a table d’hôte where they make some of the best cheese in the country. They welcome you with open arms: for one day, you can help them prepare your lunch. Haikel will introduce you to the making of his prized cheese.

On this tour, you’re bound to meet people with such a wealth of experience and generosity towards others.

Ms Noura Enouioui is a prime example. This retired schoolteacher, saddened to see young girls from her village leaving their homes to work as housemaids in the big cities, decided that things had to change. A few years later, it’s a done deal: Ms Noura now manages an Agricultural Development Group which brings together over 300 women from a variety of professions: farmers, craftswomen, workers… And the adventure is just beginning. For one day, you’ll experience it with them.

Highlights of the experience

• Visit to Sidi Bou Saïd and the Baron d’Erlanger palace.
• Visit the Medina of Tunis, the ruins of Carthage or the Bardo museum if it reopens.
• Share experiences and acquire know-how in north-western Tunisia, with cheese-makers, cooks of traditional dishes, artisan producers of cosmetics and other crafts using natural ingredients (see tour program).
• Discovery of the Groupements de Développement Agricoles (GDA), founded and managed by women living in precarious conditions, in order to acquire greater resilience and autonomy.

Ideal if… :

If you’re curious about these places and their inhabitants, their stories, their recipes and medicinal herbs, their know-how, the solutions they’ve found to overcome life’s difficulties by making the best use of their environment and making nature their best ally.

It’s not fixed knowledge that you’ll gather from local characters, often with a lot of character, but an art of living and working that always serves people and nature in the best possible way. What you know will make you better.

The spirit

There’s nothing more beautiful than experiencing a moment of peace and harmony with a soothing landscape. Discovering a country’s history through its architecture, ruins and museums is also fascinating. But there’s something even better for those who are as curious about nature as they are about its men and women. How do local residents continue to draw on their past to find solutions to their present? What can their experience offer visitors who come to meet them?

Our “tourist circuits”, covering the different regions of Tunisia, have one ambition: to enable visitors to experience unforgettable moments of harmony with places and landscapes that are rejuvenating, while sharing the daily lives of the people who inhabit them. Here you can discover part of Tunis and north-west Tunisia. First and foremost, its women, the holders of age-old know-how.

We’ve got you covered

Arrival at Tunis Carthage airport. Support. Transfer to Sidi Bou Saïd. At ease. The hotel is a restored village villa. A short tour of the village of Sidi Bou Saïd, the world’s first classified and preserved site (1915), even before the creation of UNESCO.

Day 2: Sidi Bou Saïd – Tunis – Sidi Bou Saïd

Guided tour of Baron d’Erlanger’s palace. Guided tour of the Bardo Museum. Lunch in an authentic restaurant serving Tunisian cuisine. Guided tour of the Medina of Tunis. Back to Sidi Bou Saïd. At ease. Free walks.

Day 3: Sidi Bou Saïd – Béja -Tabarka

Journey to Béja. Stop at a farm restaurant. The owners, children of the region, are also producers of artisan goat’s cheese. The ingredients used by the restaurateurs come from local farmers, artisans and breeders, trained and supported by our partner Balades Solidaires. Snack: cheese tasting. Agricultural activities in and around the farm, depending on the season (mushroom or fruit picking…) Lunch, with a menu of typical, ancestral dishes from the region. Early afternoon: departure for the nearby village of Nefza. Pick-your-own on a farm, season permitting. Jam or Aoula workshop (traditional preparation and preservation of the family’s annual food reserves). Dinner and accommodation in Tabarka, a coastal village surrounded by forest.

Day 4: Tabarka – Aïn Drahem – Tabarka

Departure for the village of Aïn Drahem. Visit to a restaurateur and artisan cheesemaker. Seasonal farming activities: milking goats, picking mushrooms and more. Cheese workshop. Lunch: typical ancestral dish of the region. These restaurateurs also buy from local women producers.

Hiking in the forest. Overnight in Tabarka, in a guest house. Typical local dinner. Ingredients from the guesthouse vegetable garden.

Day 5: Tabarka

Gathering and preparing breakfast ingredients: collecting eggs, gathering wood to heat the Tabouna clay bread oven, helping to bake bread. A rich breakfast typical of the region. Ancestral pizza-making workshop. Typical local lunch using ingredients from the host’s vegetable garden and local craftswomen and farmers. Afternoon: forest hike in search of local heather. Massage with miraculous lentisque oil. Typical light lunch.

Day 6: Tabarka – Aïn Dahrem – Tabarka

A day at the Green Village in Aïn Babouche, 5 minutes from Aïn Drahem. It is a Groupement de Développement Agricole (G.D.A.) bringing together over 300 rural women of different specialities: farmers, agricultural workers, processing craftswomen… Discover Green Village and its history. Medicinal plant picking and floral water distillation. Goat’s milk soap-making workshop. Return to the guesthouse. Typical dinner.

Day 7: Tabarka

Tabarka, rush harvesting day. Maritime plant fiber weaving workshop at a GDA. The story of these women living in precarious conditions and without skills trained by our partner, the Balades Solidaires association, in the attractive design associated with this activity. Dinner and overnight at the guesthouse.

Day 8: Tabarka

Hiking in the protected Jbel Chitana nature reserve. Picnic with GDA ingredients. Weaving workshop for the Nefza kilim, a type of carpet whose value chain and production were about to be extinguished, but have been restored thanks to the intervention of the Balades Solidaires Association. Participate in the various stages of carpet manufacture: carding, dyeing with natural ingredients, weaving…

Day 9: Tabarka – Cap Negro – Tabarka

Visit to a B&B in Cap Negro. Snack bar with natural organic products from the region. Return to the guesthouse in Tabarka. Massage with lentisque oil. Typical dinner.

Day 10: Tabarka – Tunis – departure

Price

• On request.
• Our prices include: tour organization, transportation, accommodation, culinary experiences and meals.
• Our prices do not include: insurance, options.
• Terms of payment: please consult the host.
• Reservation and cancellation policy: consult host.

Contact us

• Email : sociochanti@gmail.com
• Telephone: (+216) 55.857.908 – (+216) 23.55.47.09
• WhatsApp: (+216) 26.303.111